John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

Think, he told himself. There’s a way. There’s got to be a way.

He rolled back up to a sitting position, his bare feet flat on the floor. He needed to take a look at where he was. What could they know? They knew he was somewhere around the town, but they couldn’t know where. They’d look for him in the woods, and they’d talk to people, showing his picture around. Could that hurt him?

Oh, shit! The guy in the car! Damn! Damndamndamndamn! Sure as hell, they’d made eye contact. When the guy heard the news, he’d remember. Nathan suddenly hated himself for taking stupid chances. He’d traded everything for a couple of extra minutes of rest. He was an idiot! A fool! He was thinking like a goddamn kid, and now they had caught up with him! They were going to take him back there, and they were going to try him for murder and they were going to convict him and they were going to send him away for the rest of his life and it was all his own doing! Goddammit!

A wave of despair overcame Nathan with such force that it took his breath away. Despite his thinking and his planning, despite his prayers and all the work he’d put into laying out his routes, it had all come down to stupidity and luck. He realized now that he’d been stupid even to entertain the notion of getting away.

And luck. Hell, he’d been leaning on luck for years. He clearly saw for the first time that the hope he’d been foolish enough to hold on to since the day his father was killed had only been fueled by luck. Real life had nothing to do with it. Everyone and everything had abandoned him. God let him have a few good years just so he could know how awful the future would be. That was God’s little joke. Ha, ha, let’s all get a good laugh at Nathan! Look at that poor son of a bitch! He actually thinks there’s such thing as good fortune! He actually believes that nothing bad can happen to people who are good! Ha, ha, ha! Great joke!

No matter how dark the days, there had always been a few scattered rays of sunlight in his soul. Now, suddenly, even that comfort was gone. He had the sensation that he was in a dark room without any doors. He was so alone.

All of the monsters he’d been led to believe never existed were alive now and raging inside of him. As a toddler, they’d had the decency to stay in his closet or under his bed, but now, as his future closed on him like a door, they all came out to torture his mind. Soon the cops would be on him, and they would send him back to that place—suddenly the words were too awful to think—and he’d have nowhere left to hide. The monsters would come and consume him. He would become one of those animals who had terrorized him for nine months in the JDC, alive on the outside, but dead in his heart.

His darkened soul guided his eyes down to the gun in his hands. A terror like he’d never known gripped his heart as he realized that he in fact had ultimate control over his destiny. He lifted the pistol up to eye level and stared down the barrel. Close up, it was like staring down a manhole. The bullets were huge.

Death was a kind of freedom, wasn’t it? And it’s what everyone wanted. Why waste all that electricity in some prison when he could take care of it right here, in less time than it took to blink an eye? No more chases, no more loneliness, no more beatings.

He could be with his dad again, and live with the angels. He could meet his mother. He smiled at the thought of seeing in person the face he’d learned to love from a picture. He could almost feel the warmth of her hug, smell her heavenly perfume. His dad would smile at him again, and then they would all walk off among the clouds to be a family again.

Nathan’s lip trembled, and a single tear dripped from his chin as he pulled the hammer all the way back and brought the muzzle of the big gun up to his head, just in front of his right ear. A little pressure, and it would all be over. He’d be free. He’d be happy. One… two…

Greg Preminger was nearly bursting with pride. His discovery of the BMW had been a feat of pure police work that had already awarded him a spot on the evening news—even the networks were mentioning him by name. This was the kind of thing that led to recognition and promotions. As he traveled from door to door searching for witnesses, he allowed himself to fantasize about finding the boy as well.

Problem was, it was still early; a lot of people weren’t home from work yet. His current beat was Little Rocky Trail, where only three of the last twenty-two houses had been occupied by anyone, and none of those had seen a thing, though every single person had heard of the Bailey case. One woman shocked him by telling him he should be ashamed of himself for making things more difficult for “that poor little boy.”

Emotions always ran strong on highly publicized cases such as this, but Greg was personally offended that the death of a law enforcement officer was so easily swept under the carpet in people’s minds. People had an idealized picture of what childhood was supposed to be like, and they found it difficult to accept the reality of today’s kids. In his years as a cop, Greg had seen countless hoodlums in kids’ bodies, and as far as he was concerned, the size of the package didn’t affect the seriousness of the crime. When this Bailey kid was caught, he hoped they’d throw him in a cage forever.

If Greg had anything to say about it, he was going to be part of that process. While most of his cop buddies thought Nathan would have fled further away from the Beemer, Greg had a feeling that the boy was close by. According to the reports he’d read, Bailey had spent the first night less than a half mile from the prison. If Greg were in the kid’s position, he’d want to get under cover just as fast as he could, and that would mean Little Rocky Creek.

Greg refused to be discouraged. These things often took time. At those houses where no one was home, he left his card and a hastily-authored information sheet on the boy. If someone knew something, he was confident that they’d speak up.

As he approached the house at 4120, he was already folding his card into the next flier in the stack. He knocked on the door as a formality, really. He had come to recognize the look of an empty house.

Nathan jumped a foot and fell to the floor at the sound of the door knocker. His first thought was that the gun had fired. Then, in the next instant, he knew exactly what was happening. Through the sheer curtains over the front window, he could see the unmistakable outline of a police officer waiting at the front door. He became perfectly still, not even daring to breathe.

The cop had a bunch of papers in his arm, and the papers looked for all the world like a picture of Nathan.

“Jesus Christ,” Nathan whispered. “They found me.”

But the cop wasn’t acting like he’d found anything at all. He was acting like he was looking for something. He rapped on the door a second time, then peered through a cupped hand into the darkened living room, after checking over both shoulders to see if anyone was watching. Nathan would swear that they looked right at each other.

Still, there was no reaction. For the second time in as many days, he’d come eye to eye with his enemy, and nothing had happened. After perhaps fifteen seconds more, the cop slid one of the papers behind the screen door, then turned and walked away.

For a long time, Nathan stayed frozen to the floor. He couldn’t have moved if he had wanted to. As the adrenaline drained from his system, he felt light-headed and sick to his stomach. He rose to his knees, then swung himself back onto the sofa, where he allowed himself the slightest smile. They’d been fifteen feet away from him, and they still missed. Someday he hoped he’d have the opportunity to tell them about it.